


and ignite your bones

by frith_in_thorns



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s01e09 Into the Forest I Go, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, more angst than I intended actually, spore drive trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 10:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17896529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns
Summary: Tilly can’t look away. Stamets, colourless, whole body shaking. Vibrating. Insanely, she feels she can almost catch the note.(Missing scene 1x09 mid-episode)





	and ignite your bones

****It ends.

It ends, and he knows that it’s killing him, darning in and out of the network pulling Discovery along a thread, but the ending of it is still a wrench; a bereavement. He _belonged_ to the network, the network stretching into infinity but also collapsed into every infinitesimal point.

It ends.

His eyes hurt and his lungs hurt and the pressure of blood within his veins and arteries hurts. Each molecule of air shines too bright -- no, no, he can’t see _air_ no matter what his misfiring brain tells him but he sees the glow, the spores and the mycelial strands which pulse to the quantum beat of the universe. _Breathe_ , come on, can’t only do it once and be done, it’s a process that _never ends._

Input data clamours for attention. Waves of air beating on his inner ear. _Sound_ , yes, voices, urgency and worry in harmonics, in harmony. He lifts his head, follows the not-there connecting fibres through the air, and his eyes refocus with a reverberation that can’t, logically, be a note of music.

“Paul,” Hugh says, and this finally isn’t something he needs to recalibrate in order to understand because it only _is_ \-- love he takes for granted.

He could step through the glass. He can’t, but he could, couldn’t he? There are spaces between the atoms; glowing gaps of potential energy and he could get lost there but the glass door opens before he takes the wrong steps and he steps (stumbles) towards it instead.

“Paul,” Hugh says again -- oh, he doesn’t, he says something else, but that’s what’s underneath, that’s all he _means_.

“You’re glowing,” Paul says, and he reaches up to Hugh’s face, fingertips flicking to scatter all the other words fluttering past. Hugh glows from within and with the living threads surrounding him, and Tilly behind him shines too, copper-bright, heart-bright.

Everything around him shining, mirror-splintering into light.

It ends.

 

* * *

 

Tilly barely remembers how to breathe properly. Sometime during the last set of jumps her lungs locked up tight. It’s too much tension to let go of all at once.

They’ve got the data, the Bridge tells her, and she physically shrugs it off because right now she _does not care_. She cares about Stamets, and would be pushing herself towards him right now except that Culber’s already there before the glass cube and she defers to his better claim.

Stamets has his eyes open, which is… good, right? He’s been half conscious throughout the jumps, muscles spasming erratically, but he’s awake now, he’s looking at them, eyes unfocused but turning towards Culber’s voice. “Paul,” Culber says, “hey, are you there? Talk to me.”

Stamets doesn’t answer him, slipping out of the cube equipment like he’s flowing, floating free. “Um, should you be moving yet, Lieutenant?” Tilly asks, because she can’t help herself, and because she can see Stamets’s vital signs on Culber’s display and she’s not Medical but those numbers are very far from where they started.

“No, he shouldn't be,” Culber says, his voice hinting at deep wells of frustration which he quickly lids. “Paul, stay there. I want to transport you direct to sickbay --”

“You’re glowing,” Stamets says, soft and wondering, and his face is earnest and wide open. Tilly meets his eyes for a second and their intensity knocks the breath from her all over again. She blinks and impossibly _sees_ that glow -- only for a moment, it’s too much to maintain, and once it’s gone she knows she must have imagined it.

“Paul,” Culber murmurs, and he seems netted in the spell too, his words trailing off.

Half in, half out of the cube, Stamets crumples. He shudders, and then keeps shuddering and doesn’t stop.

“Paul --” Culber bites it off. “Tilly, help me. Help me!”

She’s shock-stunned for a second. “What? What’s happening?”

“He’s seizing. Help me get him out!”

Still, she’s frozen until Culber grabs her wrist and pulls her down. Stamets is shaking, vibrating against the glass. Small movements. She’s not seen a seizure before. She’d have thought -- “Shouldn’t we transport him out?”

“Not mid-phase!” Culber snaps, like she should have known that. Maybe she should have. Maybe -- She takes a grip on his legs as Culber steps over the rest of Stamets to grab his shoulders from underneath. She lifts, or tries to, but he’s heavier than she expected and his muscles are rigid where they aren’t spasming, but he’s going to hurt himself against the glass if they don’t get him out and she tries again, tries harder, and so does Culber, and between them they heave him over the threshold and drag him to empty space on the floor.

“What do we do now?” she asks.

“Move back,” Culber says, tightly, and she does so without getting up, scooting about a metre across the floor.

She can’t look away. Stamets, colourless, whole body shaking. Vibrating. Insanely, she feels she can almost catch the note. Even his face is drawn tight. “Can you do something?” she asks, helplessly. “Get it to stop?”

“No,” Culber says. He kneels at Stamets’s head. “Too much of a risk for his system. Not after -- no.”

“Can _I_ do something?” Tilly asks. Despite her better judgement.

He looks at her and she braces for sharpness. But he reaches out instead.

She takes his hand.

After an eternity, Stamets falls still. Deeply, terrifyingly still. Like he’s just… run down to a stop. Tilly’s heart clenches inside her. “Is he…” she whispers.

Culber lets go her hand. “Computer, emergency medical transport,” he says, and they both dissolve into light.

 

* * *

 

He opens his eyes.

He opens his eyes.

He opens his eyes, and this time it takes. Everything is so dim. So heavy.

“Paul,” Hugh says. Hugh is right there, right away. “Are you with me?”

Paul thinks about it. “Yes,” he says. But he took too long, and Hugh looks too unhappy. He coughs, swallows, tries again. “Would I not be?”

Hugh draws back a fraction. “Easily,” he says, and too many emotions swirl in his voice. Dark things.

There was a glow…

Gone now.

Hugh says his name again, when the silence stretches too far. “How are you feeling?”

Paul exhales. It’s too huge a question; he despairs of ever satisfying it. He wants to; he struggles for the words, but he can’t find them.

“Are you in pain?” Hugh tries again.

“No,” Paul says. He tries, fumbling to say what he means. “No, I’m not _in_ anything. I’m _out…_ ”

“Out of the network,” Hugh says, because of course he’s brilliant, he’s attuned to Paul better than Paul is, on the whole.

“It was --” Paul tries. He stops. Shakes his head.

“It almost killed you,” Hugh says. “Your vitals were --” He breaks off, sighs. “Well, I don’t expect you care.”

“I care,” Paul says. “ _You_ care.”

Hugh sighs deeply. “Did you mean that to be reassuring? You might want to try again.”

Paul stares at him. All that emptiness around him. He closes his eyes and remembers the threads.

“I want to go back,” he says, and _those_ words come easily.

He hears Hugh’s wounded breath.

“I can’t make you understand,” he says. “I can’t explain… I wish you could see it…”

“Do you?” Hugh asks, and he’s cautious, testing.

“No,” Paul says, suddenly afraid. He feels even heavier now. “No, because if you saw… If you knew what it’s like…” He opens his eyes. “You might never come back.”

He reaches out across the abyss and Hugh clings to his hand with a hurting strength.

“Paul, I want to help you,” Hugh says. “What can I do?”

He knows the answer. He’s always know the answer, or he found it in the threads, or he thought of it just now.

“Don’t let me,” he says.

“Don’t… what?”

“Don’t let me go.”

Hugh nods, hard. Paul breathes in the sight of him. The brightness of him, just him.

He’s beginning to fade. To drift.

“You need to rest,” Hugh says. He frowns slightly. “I hear the mission was successful.”

“The mission?” Paul says, blank for a moment.

“Breaking through the cloak? The reason for that insane sequence of jumps?”

“Oh. Yes.” He can’t summon up any particular interest. It’s such a _small_ thing. Such a small use for infinity.

Hugh half-smiles, like he understands, and rests a hand on him. A small weight. Another kind of infinity, from a certain perspective.

Paul closes his eyes.

He dreams of the network.

Of light.


End file.
